A black conservative's place for independent thinking and common sense -- A little oasis for those who got caught up in the momentum of the civil rights movement, but failed to discern the false from the true

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

It's hard to believe that grown-up men are still reciting George W. Bush's juvenile mantra of "why they hate us." You know, "because of our freedoms." Pat Buchanan nails the reason why this hackneyed refrain gets repeated, long after intelligent people have gained enough knowledge to know better. For centuries, Muslims sat over in their part of the world hurling anathema at the licentious West for its immoral, decadent ways, while Westerners, in turn, scorned the Muslims' "backward" traditions. For years, there existed a grudging live and let live peace between the two diametrically opposed cultures. In recent decades, if there were Muslim oligarchs who would have liked to stir up trouble with the West, the weaponry of the Western nations, especially that of the United States, kept such notions in check. It was not until the United States, after being drawn into partisan conflicts in the Middle East and physically intruding into Muslim territories that their curses turned brutally vengeful.

In Is the War Coming Home?, Buchanan considers the factors that radicalized the men who most recently expressed their outrage through violent actions – the passenger who tried to blow up an airliner, the soldier who shot dead 13 fellow soldiers, another who sought to massacre scores of people in Times Square, and the imam who acts as inspiration to Muslims to commit jihad against Americans.

Were these men lifetime haters of the United States, including the one who was born here, and the other who became a naturalized citizen? Buchanan observes that, "All were converted in manhood into haters of America ... And the probability is high that there are many more like them living amongst us who wish to bring the war in the Af-Pak here to America."

Instead of working to decipher what in the minds of Muslims is behind this current burst of violence, immature American ideologues continue reciting their feeble clichés, none of which explains why Muslims, after centuries of non-violence towards the West, have reverted to horrific assaults from a bygone era. New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently added his canny insight, by explaining that we are hated because "this country is so great." And Wall Street Journal pundit Bret Stephens would like to believe that Muslim hatred is rooted in our "popular culture." It's because of "Lady Gaga," he writes, along with Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, and a host of other Hollywood sexpots, as well as Playboy, the pill, women's lib and gay rights.

Buchanan calls such rationalizations "comforting thoughts" to those who hold them, because they absolve us of the need to think. "Yet, this is as self-delusional," he writes, "as saying the FLN [National Liberation Front] set off bombs in movie theaters and cafes in Algiers to kill the French because of what Brigitte Bardot was doing on screen in And God Created Woman.

No doubt, this country's toxic culture gives devout Muslims reason to despise our way of life, but, says Buchanan, "It is not why they come here to kill us." In reality, "Mohammad Atta's friends did not target Hollywood, but centers and symbols of U.S. military and political power."

Buchanan reminds us that "U.S. Marines [in 1983] were not attacked by Hezbollah until we inserted those Marines into Lebanon's civil war. No Iraqi committed an act of terror against us before we invaded Iraq." He writes:

Osama bin Laden declared war on us, first and foremost, to end the massive U.S. presence on sacred Saudi soil that is home to Mecca and Medina. Some may insist this was not his real motive. But, apparently, the Saudis believed him, for they quickly kicked us out of Prince Sultan Air Base.

As for the Taliban ... their stated grievance is the same as Gen. Washington's in our war with the British: If you want this war to end, get out of our country.

What all of these angry men have in common is their desire to exact retribution for our killing their fellow Muslims. "We are being attacked over here because we are over there," declares Buchanan. Unlike the skimpy media coverage in this country that is given to the wars and occupation, Muslims all over the world are well informed of what is going on "over there." As reported to Lew Rockwell by an American soldier stationed in Afghanistan, here is the type of scenario that is raising the consciousness of people throughout Europe and Asia:

It is like the Wild West – no one cares what you do; we are just driving and walking around the desert shooting at dudes on motorcycles and getting shot and blown up by IEDs and RPGs. We are like 50 miles from the next patrol base and no one gives a f--k about what we do here.

And a soldier's letter to Laurence Vance, also at the Lew Rockwell site:

I wanted to let you know that as a current member of the U.S. military who has been deployed five times to the Middle East, we ARE NOT fighting to defend America's freedom – we are murdering innocent people and those just fighting to protect their family and livelihoods. My enlistment is up in just over a month and I cannot wait to get out there and be more vocal against this murderous evil empire. I hope that my being a veteran will help give me some credibility.

This is the manner in which the world's Greatest Super Power conducts its "wars." No accountability and random murder, not unlike the aggressions of ghetto gangbangers.

3 comments:

Adrianna
said...

They hate us for our freedoms? Really?

What people who believe this never seem to explain to us is *why.* If they want our freedoms so badly, why don't they either move here and assimilate into our culture? Or why don't they grant themselves and their fellow citizens their own freedoms?

Because they don't *want* them, obviously.

Even those people who might have been sympathetic to the government's cause certainly aren't so sympathetic now. Who would be after seeing strange men bulldoze your home and kill friends and loved ones?

Why do we care what goes on in those nations? Whatever problems they have are their own to solve. In fact, given that most Americans, most of all those Americans that think Muslims hate us for out freedoms, know very little about Muslim culture, I would advise most strongly against intervening in their affairs.

But Islam oppresses women. I ask, how many women do you think we killed while waging war over there? For nothing?

This is not, nor has it ever been, about freedom for Muslims, protecting Muslim women, or anything of the sort.

Adrianna wrote:Even those people who might have been sympathetic to the government's cause certainly aren't so sympathetic now. Who would be after seeing strange men bulldoze your home and kill friends and loved ones?

The reasons for invading those countries kept being altered. First, to kill those bad guys who engineered the WTC disaster. Then, to get rid of dictators like Hussein. Then, to bring democracy to the people. Then, to nation build.

And, finally, they thought up the "women" excuse. After all the atrocities committed against them and their children, I wonder how many Arab women wish the clock could be turned back, and their countries restored to pre-American invasion. Under Hussein, all groups were protected from random attacks. Because he was a dictator, he was in a position to use his power to keep crime (especially rape) to a non-existent level. Iraqis did not dare step out of line. Once the Americans destroyed the existing government, all Hell broke loose and competing religious sects had a free-for-all against others, and against women.

If those women yearn so much for "liberation," then they must get busy working to transform their societies, as was done here. (God help them if they end up with this country's promiscuity!) How could anyone have a mission to interfere with centuries-long social practices among a foreign people, no matter how antiquated it looks to them? Even in those African regions, where albinos are being killed for superstitious purposes, it is for the residents of those societies to put an end to this. All a foreigner can do is stand on the sidelines and offer help when it's appropriate -- not make war on those people, in order to "civilize" them.

Not only the innocent have we killed but we have killed our brothers and sisters in Christ. Many Christians lived in the Muslim countries peacefully until we interfered. As a nation/government we have no business being there. However, Christians could go taking the Gospel of Christ to them. I do not mean "craming Christ down their throats" but the teachings of Christ,i.e., feeding the pour, helping the needy, sharing their love of Christ through the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, Christ's respect for women, His admonition of teaching the children in righteousness. The Bible says to love others and doing right there is no law against it.

By its actions our government has made enemies of peoples around the world. George Washington and other of the founding fathers admonished us to be friends as such that we could but not to make alliances with foreign countries. Certainly we were not to go invading, nation building, demanding they have a "democracy" --a form of government the founders abhorred and thought it no more than "mob rule"!

Loss of the Issues & Views website

Due to the fact that the owners of the company that has hosted Issues & Views - The Website, since its creation in 1997, have decided to host only sites in Alaska, the website linked to this blog is probably lost.

Issues & Views - The Website (www.issues-views.com) contained hundreds of articles first printed in the hard copy Issues & Views newsletter (1983 through 2002), along with newer articles composed in the 1990s.

Although the former host has re-directed clicks to the website to this blog, it does not appear that there will be any rescue of the website's files or database. For this reason, surfers looking for issues-views.com are landing on this blog. (The website is currently being cached by Google.)

I have learned that an archived version of the website is available on Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, this last capture was performed in 2008, so it lacks certain minor deletions and editing done in 2009 and 2010. However, anyone searching for a particular article should be able to find it there.

- Elizabeth (issues@issues.cnc.net)

Racism is not "sin"

Over the years, as whites have worked to defend themselves against the charge of "racism," they have validated this slur by giving it greater importance than it deserves, and thereby helped to institutionalize it as the world's greatest "sin." As to genuine sin, harboring negative thoughts concerning some group is much further down the list of human deficiencies than bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Hamburg, or hacking to death with machetes the men, women and children of an enemy tribe. Now, those are sins! Seeking to force "diversity" down the throats of an unreceptive segment of society is the religious mission of rabid, agenda-driven ideologues. None of this apparent concern for "social justice" has ever been about virtue. It's about power.

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Jacobs and Potter on the un-American nature of "hate crime" legislation.